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Write a brief explanation why you like the book and to whom you would recommend it. You may also include hyperlinks to relevant websites
March 1, 2015- Virginia- IST Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline The story is compelling, swift, and not too long. I think mature readers will read this novel. The story is told from the point of view of a 17 year old girl. From Booklist
A long journey from home and the struggle to find it again form the heart of the intertwined stories that make up this moving novel. Foster teen Molly is performing community-service work for elderly widow Vivian, and as they go through Vivian’s cluttered attic, they discover that their lives have much in common. When Vivian was a girl, she was taken to a new life on an orphan train. These trains carried children to adoptive families for 75 years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the Great Depression. Novelist Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009) brings Vivian’s hardscrabble existence in Depression-era Minnesota to stunning life. Molly’s present-day story in Maine seems to pale in comparison, but as we listen to the two characters talk, we find grace and power in both of these seemingly disparate lives. Although the girls are vulnerable, left to the whims of strangers, they show courage and resourcefulness. Kline illuminates a largely hidden chapter of American history, while portraying the coming-of-age of two resilient young women. --Bridget Thoreson --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
February 26, 2015 - Marion - International School of Luxembourg
In 1970s Ohio, blue-eyed Marilyn wants daughter Lydia to become a doctor, while Lydia's father, Chinese American James Lee, wants her to be popular. Now she's at the bottom of a lake. What the reviews say: A mesmerizing narrative that shrinks enormous issues of race, prejudice, identity, and gender into the miniaturist dynamics of a single family. A breathtaking triumph, reminiscent of prophetic debuts by Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, and -Chimamanda Adichie, whose first titles matured into spectacular, continuing literary legacies.
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.
February 12, 2015 - Isolde - German Swiss International School Hong Kong
Suffused with empathy, this honest examination of the far-ranging effects of PTSD follows 17-year-old Hayley as she tries to preserve her relationship with her father, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who is suffering mentally and physically from his tours of duty. It’s yet another emotionally astute and compassionate performance from Anderson.
Privilege and pain are intimately connected in Lockhart’s knotty examination of the lies we tell ourselves and others. As amnesiac Cady Eastman tries to piece together the mystery of what befell her family two years earlier on a private island off Cape Cod, readers are treated to an engrossing and unpredictable psychological thriller.
Hey, kid, want to give yourself nightmares? Look no further than this profoundly chilling collection of comics, five stories in all, that combine lavishly illustrated historical settings with terrifying visions of otherworldly and psychological terrors. Abduction, possession, cold-blooded murder, parasitic tentacled fiends—they’re all here, and more.
February 3, 2015 - Emily - NIS
Timebound (The Chronos Files #1)by Rysa Walker (2013) - Kate becomes embroiled in a time-travelling nightmare as her Grandmother (from the future, but got stuck in the past), battles again her Grandfather (also from the future and bent on world domination). The time-travel rules are well laid out, the plot is fascinating, and the characters are easy to relate to. I was fascinated by the Grandfather's motives and the explanation of the how time travel works (basic physics and bubble universes). A great adventure novel and you learn a little bit about history as well. Recommended for grades 6-9, although maybe higher depending on how sensitive they are to hinted at sexual situations (the main character has a serious discussion with a boy she's dating about whether or not they should have sex because if she changes the past then she'll remember it, but he won't).
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe (2014) - Randall Munroe, the author/illustrator of the XKCD blog (www.xkcd.com) and former NASA physicist takes bizarre questions (current one on the website:
Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be?) and answers them with real scientific data. In the process he makes complex physics incredibly accessible. He also highlights questions with random comics and minor asides (done as footnotes) that add to the humor. I can't stop talking about how much I enjoyed this book. I finished reading it and immediately picked it up again. Recommended for readers in grades 9 up, basic Physics is helpful (although I never took physics and still understood most of the questions or the concept was explained fully enough by the author).
How to post a nomination
March 1, 2015- Virginia- IST
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
The story is compelling, swift, and not too long. I think mature readers will read this novel. The story is told from the point of view of a 17 year old girl.
From Booklist
A long journey from home and the struggle to find it again form the heart of the intertwined stories that make up this moving novel. Foster teen Molly is performing community-service work for elderly widow Vivian, and as they go through Vivian’s cluttered attic, they discover that their lives have much in common. When Vivian was a girl, she was taken to a new life on an orphan train. These trains carried children to adoptive families for 75 years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the Great Depression. Novelist Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009) brings Vivian’s hardscrabble existence in Depression-era Minnesota to stunning life. Molly’s present-day story in Maine seems to pale in comparison, but as we listen to the two characters talk, we find grace and power in both of these seemingly disparate lives. Although the girls are vulnerable, left to the whims of strangers, they show courage and resourcefulness. Kline illuminates a largely hidden chapter of American history, while portraying the coming-of-age of two resilient young women. --Bridget Thoreson --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
February 26, 2015 - Marion - International School of Luxembourg
In 1970s Ohio, blue-eyed Marilyn wants daughter Lydia to become a doctor, while Lydia's father, Chinese American James Lee, wants her to be popular. Now she's at the bottom of a lake.
What the reviews say: A mesmerizing narrative that shrinks enormous issues of race, prejudice, identity, and gender into the miniaturist dynamics of a single family. A breathtaking triumph, reminiscent of prophetic debuts by Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, and -Chimamanda Adichie, whose first titles matured into spectacular, continuing literary legacies.
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.
February 12, 2015 - Isolde - German Swiss International School Hong Kong
//The Impossible Knife of Memory// by Laurie Halse Anderson
Suffused with empathy, this honest examination of the far-ranging effects of PTSD follows 17-year-old Hayley as she tries to preserve her relationship with her father, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who is suffering mentally and physically from his tours of duty. It’s yet another emotionally astute and compassionate performance from Anderson.
//We Were Liars// by E. Lockhart
Privilege and pain are intimately connected in Lockhart’s knotty examination of the lies we tell ourselves and others. As amnesiac Cady Eastman tries to piece together the mystery of what befell her family two years earlier on a private island off Cape Cod, readers are treated to an engrossing and unpredictable psychological thriller.
//Through the Woods// by Emily Carroll
Hey, kid, want to give yourself nightmares? Look no further than this profoundly chilling collection of comics, five stories in all, that combine lavishly illustrated historical settings with terrifying visions of otherworldly and psychological terrors. Abduction, possession, cold-blooded murder, parasitic tentacled fiends—they’re all here, and more.
February 3, 2015 - Emily - NIS
Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be?) and answers them with real scientific data. In the process he makes complex physics incredibly accessible. He also highlights questions with random comics and minor asides (done as footnotes) that add to the humor. I can't stop talking about how much I enjoyed this book. I finished reading it and immediately picked it up again. Recommended for readers in grades 9 up, basic Physics is helpful (although I never took physics and still understood most of the questions or the concept was explained fully enough by the author).